RIP Thread

[Thorndyke Special]

I'm torn on him. At one time he was part of Ayn Rand's circle and truly believed in free enterprise, the gold standard and limited government. And as you said, it could have been much worse had someone else been Fed chair instead of him.

But that said, his tenure at the Fed wasn't exactly a celebration of those early ideals. Yes, he did push for the privatization of Social Security, among other things, but the guy also juiced the economy with easy money.

I do agree with you and think you're correct. I just look at the hack ghouls that came after him and see creatures that are 10x worse so he looks tremendous in comparison. Hyper-partisan Janet Yellen was such a fiscal tragedy during her time there; if she'd been at the helm for five fed terms, we'd all be eating from breadlines. He was consistently drum-beating in front of and behind the scenes about growing deficits: this is now something that is entirely gone. I do think he did a very good job of managing sub 2% inflation. I miss those days.